Good progress today given I had to retire after 3 hours as it was bitterly cold in the garage. The postman delivered these, stainless bodies with a chrome spring matched to my and the weight of the bike all for £206. They look well made and nicely finished, apart from the stickers which look a bit cheap.
The first task today was to disentangle the fuse box, the regulator rectifier, and the wiring loom from the engine so that it could be removed. I made a diagram of the 26 connection points on the fuse box and numbered each wire as it came off with masking tape and a sharpy. This took about an hour. The bike is part Ducati as marked up on the back of the regulator rectifier.
A bit of a struggle on my own but the engine came out relatively easily, I will put it back with the heads and barrels off as otherwise, the frame paint will suffer too badly.
The old rusty petrol that came out of the tank was pressed into degreasing duties once I had modified my engine stand slightly so that the engine would fit into it. It was truly evil-smelling.
I thought I would then have a go at the kink on the frame near the side stand bracket but my MAP gas bottle was empty, probably just as well with all the vapour in the garage. I used a nylon faced hammer to try to knock out the kink, after about half an hour I had got more than half the kink out but where the bracket is welded to the frame the metal thickness with the weld meant that it was not yielding to the gentle persuasion. The frame tube material is remarkably soft as I had to be careful not to dent the tube even with the nylon faced hammer
Finally, I got the forks out, the headraces are separate balls in two races and I think I may have lost one or two when the bottom yoke dropped and they were bouncing off the bench and around the floor.
Here is the state of play when I retired to warm up.
